Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
September 28, 1899 The first electric trams to operate in Perth, the capital city of what was then the British colony of Western Australia, made their official debut. (A little over a year later, Western Australia became a state as part of the newly formed Commonwealth of Australia.) The new transit system – owned and... Continue Reading →
September 25, 1967 In Southern California, a groundbreaking ceremony was held at El Cajon Boulevard and Boundary Street in San Diego for Interstate 805 (I-805). Planning for that route dated back to 1956, the same year in which the Interstate Highway System itself first came into existence. After the groundbreaking ceremony, I-805 was constructed in phases. It... Continue Reading →
September 24, 1929 U.S. Army Air Corps (USAAC) Lieutenant James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, who would achieve lasting fame as commander of the Doolittle Raid during World War II, made his most significant contribution to aeronautical technology when he guided a Consolidated N-Y-2 Husky training biplane over Mitchel Field in New York in what was the... Continue Reading →
After a ribbon-cutting ceremony, a newly built bridge across Lake Champlain was officially opened to traffic on November 7, 2011. The Lake Champlain Bridge connects Crown Point, New York, with Chimney Point, Vermont. This structure replaced a bridge that had opened at that location in 1929 and was demolished in 2009. It took only about... Continue Reading →
September 22, 1986 The Alex Fraser Bridge was officially opened in Canada. This cable-stayed bridge carries British Columbia Highway 91 over the Fraser River and connects the cities of Richmond and New Westminster with the community of North Delta in the metropolitan region of Vancouver, British Columbia. The northern end of the bridge is on Annacis... Continue Reading →
September 18, 1831 Automotive pioneer Siegfried Samuel Marcus was born in the town of Malchin in the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, which is now part of the Federal Republic of Germany. By the mid-1850s, Marcus had moved to Vienna and worked in that city as a manufacturer of scientific instruments until his death in 1898.... Continue Reading →
September 17, 1914 Ernest Lloyd Janney was anything but a tourist when he journeyed from his native Canada to visit Marblehead, Massachusetts, on September 17, 1914. He visited that town on the northeastern Massachusetts coast on behalf of his country’s government for another purpose, and that was to make a purchase -- and a historic... Continue Reading →
Michael J. Hoffmann of Minnesota served as president of the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) in 1946, in an era when both that association and the United States were moving further away from the World War II years and grappling with the major peacetime challenges facing the nation’s highways. In two key benchmarks... Continue Reading →
September 14, 1974 Brazil’s first underground rapid transit system made its public debut when regular service began on a 4.3-mile (6.9-kilometer)-long section of the São Paulo Metrô between the Jabaquara and Vila Mariana stations on the North-South Line (the present-day Blue Line). Those taking part in the formal inauguration of this system included Miguel Colasuonno, who... Continue Reading →
September 11, 2001 The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, resulted in the tragic deaths of nearly 3,000 individuals in the vicinity of New York City’s World Trade Center; the Pentagon in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area; and –where a hijacked airplane went down after passengers sought to overcome the terrorists... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 